Julia D. Thompson

Work in progress — Project-Based Service Learning in engineering: Investigating partner relationships

Project-Based Service Learning (PBSL) is increasingly popular in engineering programs as a way to develop key student skills and address community needs. Since most PBSL projects have the intention of providing a service to a community, it is critical that partner voices are heard. However, there has been little research examining the roles and motivations of project clients. To address the community perspective, the authors have identified six organizations with longstanding (over five years) partnerships with Purdue Universitys Engineering Projects In Community Service (EPICS) program, and will interview 1–3 individuals associated with each. These partners have been involved with numerous EPICS projects over multiple years. Our major objectives are to investigate why organizations maintain long-term partnerships with EPICS, and develop recommendations for enhancing benefits to all stakeholders. Here we present a background literature review and description of the project scope and methods.

An analysis of DC circuit theory content in an engineering textbook: Presentation features, conceptual content, and use of analogies

Textbooks play an integral role in teaching and learning across disciplines and levels of undergraduate engineering education. In this paper we present an empirically derived framework for evaluating engineering textbooks, based on prior findings from the field of engineering education research. Our more specific focus is content related to DC resistive circuits. We begin with a review of prior literature on textbook analysis in engineering education and other fields, and then provide a detailed description of our analytic framework, which includes three different categories of analysis: presentation features, conceptual content, and use of analogies. To demonstrate the utility of the proposed framework, we apply it to the content of a first-year engineering textbook. Our analysis reveals significant gaps between the textbooks coverage of electric circuit theory and recent advances in engineering education research, which provide many insights about effective teaching and learning techniques based on a conceptual understanding approach. Our analysis is relevant for textbook authors, who can use the framework presented in this paper to guide textbook development and revision. Instructors can also benefit by using our criteria to evaluate and select textbooks, and incorporating supplemental materials to address common conceptual gaps.

Panel: Engineering and development: Facilitating successful project work in diverse global contexts

Over the last decade, a growing number of initiatives have emerged to provide engineering students, faculty, and professionals with opportunities to work on service-oriented projects in developing contexts. And while these courses and programs provide needed resources and services to communities in far-flung locations, they also pose unique challenges and difficulties. For example, projects of this type often require knowledge, skills, and attitudes that are not typically covered in traditional engineering courses nor possessed by many faculty. Additionally, there is growing recognition regarding the need to predict and evaluate the full range of impacts that student projects have on partner communities - both positive and negative. This panel engages these kinds of challenges by bringing together a group of individuals with extensive experience preparing engineering students for project work in developing contexts. In addition to representing programs at four institutions (Colorado School of Mines, Michigan Technological University, Purdue University, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute), the presenters are involved with a host of related national and international initiatives. Each panelist will give an overview of their efforts, with particular emphasis on observed successes and failures, conceptual hurdles faced by students and professionals, pedagogical approaches employed, and most useful resources. The primary audience for this panel includes faculty, staff, and students who lead, support, and/or study global service learning. To enable a more engaging, interactive, and productive session, ample time will be provided to allow attendees to describe their own experiences, share resources, and pose questions. The primary intent of the panel is to help university students, faculty, and staff be more effective when undertaking engineering work in developing contexts. including by promoting scholarly community and collaboration, sharing resources, and seeding new research initiatives.